Donkey Long Tong 5th Birthday: Best Braai in Cape Town
A Heritage Braai Feast with Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants
Some brands mark a birthday with cake and a social media post. Donkey Long Tong invited their closest friends, family and business partners, sat them around two long tables, and served more meat than any of us should reasonably have eaten. Now that’s a fifth birthday party I didn’t want to miss.
We were invited to join the celebration on Thursday 24 September, which was Heritage Day, and often dubbed Braai Day. The night was a collaboration between Donkey Long Tong and Andrew Nel from Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants, arguably Cape Town’s favourite ethical butcher. Because what is the use of a donkey long tong, when you don’t have high-quality (and ethically sourced) meat to braai?
The origin story behind Donkey Long Tong
Every self-respecting braai master has a Donkey Long Tong. Made in Cape Town, the oversized, oak-handled braai tongs started as a joke between friends. Marcel and Simóne Hattingh and Nic Eve spent much of their spare time around fires, and after Simóne burnt her fingers over a Weber, one of them suggested a longer tong (a doos long tong). The joke stuck, Marcel built one, and five years later, their tongs are in over 200 stores. At their fifth birthday celebration, Marcel, Simóne and Nic brought the original Weber that Simóne burnt her fingers at, and re-enacted the scene during which the idea for Donkey Long Tong was born. We laughed at their reconstruction on the night, but it does serve as a good reminder how all brands start as a simple problem that needs to be solved.
Donkey long tables
We arrived at The Barn, which serves both as the factory (upstairs) and the store downstairs. Two long tables were covered in brown paper, which was covered in cartoon-style scenes telling the story of how Donkey Long Tong began - from the braai in Richtersvlei, to Simóne exclaiming “Eina! Someone needs to make a longer tong!” to Marcel, Nic and Simóne collecting the first 300 tong arms at the factory. It also depicted their factory through the years, from starting at a kitchen counter at an AirBnb in Sea Point in 2021 all the way through to their current factory in Paardeneiland (just around the corner from my lighting factory).
Avante and the Cape Brandy category
Matthew from Avante brandy spoke about his goal of turning Cape Brandy into a category of its own, the way champagne did for sparkling wine. He also shared the Avante origin story. Instead of paying influencers to talk about the brand, they got well-known rugby icons (starting off with John Smit) to buy into it. Once those players were bought into the product, they had a real reason to help make it a success. As a serial entrepreneur myself, I was impressed how they managed to get so much high-profile buy-in, and the brandy tasting that followed showed that their investment in R&D had paid off.
Beyond the Long Tong
Marcel showed off a prototype of a new product they'll be launching soon. I can't tell you more than that yet, but keep an eye on their store. The founders keep all their first prototypes downstairs in the shop, which I loved.
After the speeches, the Heritage Feast could begin. To start, Andrew and his team served up beef curry tartare with crispy curry leaves, chopped curry pickles, curry aioli and dhalthjie onion, served as paper bites. Delicious. Up next, venison carpaccio with biltong and rosemary aioli, boerewors pickled onion, fresh micro coriander and chilli oil. A favourite I remember having at Frankie Fenner Feasts as well (recommended!). Curry leaves in a tartare and biltong in an aioli are both very South African, and I loved how Andrew managed to infuse our heritage and culture into these dishes.
Then the feast began, and the tables filled up:
Rump with salt and lemon
Bavette with chimichurri
T-bone with biltong tallow butter
Umami skinny lamb tjops
Deboned lamb staanrib with lemon
Venison sosaties
Sosatie wors
Boerewors wheels
Lamb dhanya wors with mebos chutney
Fried potato salad
Creamy coleslaw
Butter FIRE mielies
Roosterkoek and butter
Brandy & Coke monkeyglad and mebos chutney for the table
It was a proper spread, with several cuts and a few types of wors to work through. I liked seeing venison on the sosaties, and the T-bone with biltong tallow butter is an idea I'm going to steal for my own fire. I've cooked a boerewors and seafood paella on the skottel, but seeing wors done this many ways made me want to experiment more. The mebos chutney was a good reminder of how well fruit and fire go together (this is your reminder to add stone fruit to your braai).
For something sweet, we could collect peppermint crisp tart doughnuts and malva doughnuts from the front. Two South African dessert classics in doughnut form - delicious. It wasn’t a competition, but despite my love for malva (it’s the dish that won me the MasterChef title, after all), the peppermint crisp tart doughnuts definitely won.
Five years in, Donkey Long Tong still feels like what it started as: a few friends around a fire who took a joke a bit too far. The birthday was an authentic celebration of just that, and the great food you can cook on the fire. If you love a braai as much as I do, the Donkey Long Tong products are worth a look. If you're after more fire-cooking ideas, my whole chicken on the braai is a good place to start.
Visit The Barn
Address: 48 Marine Drive Service Road, Paarden Eiland, Cape Town
Trading hours: Mon to Thu 10am to 5pm | Fri 10am to 4pm
Shop online or find a stockist at donkeylongtong.co.za
Photo credit: Niki M Photography
Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.
Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.
It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.
On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (8), Olivia (6) and Harvey (4).
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